*(06-20) 12:35 PDT OAKLAND* -- Hundreds of demonstrators, gathering at thePort of Oakland before dawn, prevented the unloading of an Israeli cargoship.

The demonstrators, demanding an end to Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip,picketed at Berth 58, where a ship from Israel's Zim shipping line isscheduled to dock later today. The day shift of longshoremen agreed not tocross the picket line.

International pressure to end the Gaza closure has increased since Israelicommandos stormed a flotilla of ships attempting to run the blockade on May31, killing nine people. Last week, Israeli officials announced that theywould loosen but not lift the blockade, allowing more goods to enter theimpoverished area.

"Our view is that the state of Israel can not engage in acts of piracy andkill people on the high seas and still think their cargo can go anywhere inthe world," said Richard Becker, an organizer with ANSWER, one of many peaceand labor groups involved in Sunday's action.

Becker estimated that 600 to 700 people joined the demonstration, many ofthem arriving at 5:30 a.m. Oakland police, who estimated the crowd at 500people, reported no arrests.

The demonstrators want to block the unloading of the Zim ship for a fullday. After convincing the day shift of longshoreman to honor the picketline, the demonstrators dispersed around 10 a.m., Becker said. The ship isscheduled to arrive in mid-afternoon, and the demonstrators plan to gatheragain around 4:30 p.m. and re-establish their picket line before the eveningshift of longshoremen arrives at 6 p.m.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro was interrogated some years ago by the New YorkTimes, demanding to know why freedom of the press is not allowed in Cuba.Meaning, of course, beyond buzzwords, the inclusion of pro-capitalistreporting. To which Fidel's checkmate reply was something like, we'll allowthat to happen when you allow a communist reporter on the staff of the NewYork Times.

Now years later, this reality in the more than ever corporate owned US mediais far from a laughing matter, where the lines between who owns big businessand who finances and controls the US media and what constitutes so-callednews, are hopelessly blurred. Not to mention the concurrent pressure onjournalists to self-censor in order to keep their jobs, in particular in theface of significant newsroom layoffs now with the economic crisis kickingin.

So where do news investigators seeking the truth find themselves in thismoral and ethical quandary, while detouring around that dubious entitycalled freedom of the press? Apparently in nonfiction filmmaking, if asubstantial portion of that impressive body of work lately is anyindication. And most exemplary among those documentaries right now is OliverStone's South Of The Border.

Dismissing corporate media accounts as annoying fiction to say the least,the multiple Academy Award winning director (Platoon, Born On The Forth OfJuly, Midnight Express) and decorated Viet Nam veteran embarks on a roadmovie of a very different sort. Serving as narrator, interviewer andfilmmaker, Stone is in search of the real story behind the election of sevenleftist presidents in Latin America, many of them demonized by a suspiciouscolluding Washington DC and US media more interested in political dominationand control of foreign natural resources, and who knows how many conflict ofinterest personal investments by politicians and media moguls alike.]

Written by eminent UK historian Tariq Ali (who had songs written in hishonor by John Lennon and Mick Jagger) and Mark Weisbrot, a leadingprogressive authority on Latin America, South of The Border whether bydesign or coincidence, ironically shares its title with the deplorable 1939western of the same name. Starring Gene Autry and a cast of Mexicanvillains, that film approached the notion of the southern border more akinto the current right wing anti-immigrant surge.

And in a very different 'discovery' of the Americas, Stone introduces thedocumentary with a gaggle of cackling imbecilic Fox 'news actors' mockinglymisrepresenting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a cokehead, juxtaposedwith Stone inviting the audience on a journey to find out who Chavez reallyis, and where he came from. Including the president driving Stone himself tothe village and the hut made of palm leaves where he was born, along withthe surrounding rural collectivization that has vastly improved the lives ofthe campesinos. And his continued efforts to oppose US meddling in theaffairs of his country, who sabotage his government over domination of vitaloil reserves. And attempted interference in his programs that addressterrible conditions of poverty by promoting economic equality, andcurtailing through nationalization the exploitation and enrichment of USconnected corporations.

The history of imperialism then and now is linked in the film in greatdetail to its current propaganda arms, both the domestic and Venezuelancorporate media, while Cuba is seen sending in 10,000 physicians and freemedicine to treat many impoverished Venezuelans who had never seen a doctor.And in effect, poverty in Venezuela under Chavez has been cut in half.

And though South Of The Border is steeped in detailed information and a vastcorrective history, there are many casual moments of warmth, poignancy andhumor to be had as well. Including Stone bonding with Chavez in an emotionalexchange as two former soldiers in war; chewing coco leaves with IndigenousBolivian President Evo Morales (contrary to US media propaganda, a substancein its organic state no more of a stimulant than coffee); and courageouschallenges to IMF debt servitude by President Christina Kirchner ofArgentina, who also remarks on how for the first time in history the leadersof the 'new' Latin America look just like the people who elected them. Andin brief but similarly enlightening and euphoric sequences, Stone meets withthe presidents of Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador and Paraguay.

Gritty, grassroots and genuine in spirit, South Of The Border's salt of theearth scrutiny initiates a reversal of the tide of corrupted US journalism.And lifts the entire entity out of its debased opportunism, even if on thebig screen rather than the smaller version for US audiences. In a case inwhich size matters, in more ways than one.

South Of The Border opens at NYC's Angelika Theater on June 25th, and atLaemmle's Monica 4Plex 0n July 2nd in Los Angeles.

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Swing Riots Concert July 17th

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles, 1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

SwingRiots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present SwingRiots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime SwingRiots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it! --Ross Altman